Swarm control

With the current unpredictable weather, many colonies may be preparing to swarm. It is really important to check your hives regularly and carry out swarm controls!

Val Vivian-Griffiths has written a very clear and useful explanation of swarm control as practised at our Apiary, which you can read here: Swarming by Val V-G

Also Clive de Bruyn in his book ‘Practical Beekeeping‘ offers these suggestions to deter bees from swarming:

– Remove some bees and brood to make a nucleus– Remove some brood to another colony– Exchange a populous colony with swarm cells with a weaker colony in the apiary– Give the colony another super with empty drawn comb and foundation (place this immediately on top of the queen excluder)– Remove the supers and bees. Unite these to a weak colony with newspaper (be sure to give the colony some empty supers to replace those taken away)

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